advantage, relating to the terrorist attacks on september 11th, 2012, on the diplomatic compound in benghazi, libya. >> in fact, what this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated response. >> reporter: five days after those attacks, rice went on the sunday shows, repeating talking points from the intelligence community, that critics said downplayed the terrorist attack in the weeks leading up to the election. >> i didn't mislead. i didn't misrepresent. i did the best with the information the united states government had at the time. >> reporter: democrats point out that republicans didn't have as hard a time with a different national security adviser named rice who had different inaccurate talking points from the intelligence community. that was condoleezza rice, talking about iraqi weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. that was a different time. george? >> yes, it was, jake, thanks very much. >>> let's get more on this from our senior foreign affairs correspondent, martha raddatz. and martha raddatz, now in line to be named secretary of state, senator john kerry of massachus